Maxime de la Rocheterie on Marie-Antoinette

"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

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Monday, November 23, 2015

Many Americans would happily have us take in some nice Syrians who
have nowhere in the Middle East to turn, who are hunted, plundered,
raped, sold and sometimes murdered. And since we have limited capacity
in a world of more than 7 billion people, it makes sense to focus on
those who have nowhere safe in the Middle East to turn. Yes, Sunni and
Shiite Muslims persecute each other in the Middle East, but each group
has Sunni or Shiite enclaves they can retreat to in the region. The
Christians, meanwhile, aren’t even safe in the refugee camps.

So dangerous are the camps for Syrian Christians that they mostly
avoid them. And the UN does its refugee head-counting in the refugee
camps. If the Christians aren’t there to be counted, desperate as they
are, then they don’t end up on the asylum lists the U.S. State
Department uses for vetting potential refugees.

So, why doesn’t the White House take steps to find and include
persecuted Syrian Christian in numbers at least proportionate to their
slice of the Syrian population? Maybe the Obama administration
just doesn’t care, but even if they cared a little, doing something
serious about it would risk annoying the Muslim leaders of the
Muslim-dominated countries in the Middle East.

As bad off as the Muslim refugees are, they aren’t without
politically well-connected advocates in the Middle East. Many Muslim
powerbrokers are happy to see Europe and America seeded with Muslim
immigrants, and would surely condemn any U.S. action that appeared to
prefer Christian over Muslim refugees, even if the effort were
completely justified. By and large, they support Muslim immigration to
the West and have little interest in seeing Christian refugees filling
up any spaces that might have been filled by Muslim refugees.

The deck, in other words, is heavily stacked against the Christian
refugees. The White House has been utterly feckless before the Muslim
power structure in the Middle East that is doing the stacking, and has
tried to sell that fecklessness to the American people as a bold stand
for a religion-blind treatment of potential refugees —religion tests are un-American! It’s a smokescreen. (Read more.)

So what would Thomas Aquinas say?

I’m afraid that Thomas would be much harsher than most of us would feel comfortable with.
Thomas prizes the “common good” so highly under the virtue of
political justice that he openly promotes arms and capital punishment
against those who are publicly “dangerous and infectious.”The common good is the peace of society so that life and faith can thrive.
Babies can be born and have a happy life. Grandparents can grow old
together. Anyone who seeks to destroy the common good should be,
according to Thomas, destroyed.

Thomas Aquinas also taught that anyone that fomented “danger
to the community” or heretical movements is worthy of the death penalty:

“Therefore if a man be dangerous and infectious to the
community, on account of some sin, it is praiseworthy and advantageous
that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good.” STh II-II q. 64, a. 2.
It is permissible to kill a criminal if this is necessary for the
welfare of the whole community. However, this right belongs only to the
one entrusted with the care of the whole community — just as a doctor
may cut off an infected limb, since he has been entrusted with the care
of the health of the whole body. STh II-II q. 64, a. 3.

Have no doubt that Thomas Aquinas would have stated that Christian nations should receive Christian refugees but refuse Muslim refugees for the sake of national justice and the common good. The
Muslim’s official declaration of faith denies natural law (eg,
polygamy), religious liberty (eg, Sharia), and implicitly Muhammad’s
doctrine and example of political violence.(Read more.)

My
heart has become in even greater anguish because of the turn of events
over the past week: Paris attacked by terrorists possibly from many
different countries. And in the wake of that, thousands of Facebook
users changed their Profile Pic to that of France’s flag colors. I
changed my Profile Pic in solidarity as well. But not everyone stands in
solidarity with France. An Iraqi refugee family that has been living in
the U.S. for 18 months (father, mother, 2 grown sons, 2 high school
sons) that my own family befriended chose to change their Profile Pics
to the colors of the Iraqi flag. Under one of the grown son’s profile
pic, his mother (a woman that I have shared many dinners with) wrote in
Arabic: ‘Go to hell, America. May God curse America and Israel to hell.’
I replied with a warning to use great caution when making online curses
against a country that has taken them in, provided them with refuge,
financial assistance and free education. Up to this point, there was no
indication that there were any negative feelings toward the U.S. I took
them to be very friendly, engaged, thankful refugees.I
am still in shock over the French attacks and over my “friend’s” post.
Because of all the emotion and confusion I’m experiencing, I deactivated
my Facebook account, but not before screenshotting this damning post
and reporting it to the refugee resettlement agency. (Read more.)

Cracked presents a variant of one of its strong suits, reporting
news of the weird (the other being teaching little-known history that
should be better known; its weakness is it's becoming as cravenly
politically correct as The Onion with sermonizing): 7 things I learned reading every issue of ISIS' magazine, Dabiq.

In important ways they're exactly what you think and are honest about it: they're evil killers proud of their slaughter.

Don't invade, don't invite. Killing them doesn't deter them;
they're willing to die. Their violence in the West (to Muslims here: "If
you can't move here like you should, kill a Crusader there for us")
makes sense because they're picking a fight, not trying to get our
sympathy. They want us to invade Syria so they can fight us on their turf. Makes sense militarily plus it conveniently fulfills one of their prophecies.

They're thieves, parasites: they get most of their money from robbing banks and steal most of their weapons from us and the Russians.

Their worst enemy and biggest fear, the biggest threat to them: they're going broke. Like depriving a fire of oxygen, just let them burn out over there.

Stopped clock: drugs are bad and gold is good, common sense they believe in, which the lefties at Cracked
make fun of, taking a swipe at Ron Paul and Internet libertarians for
the gold part. I'll add: they realize that having lots of kids is good;
contracepting and aborting yourselves into extinction is stupid.

The people they hate the most aren't white Westerners but heretical or lapsed Muslims, even the Taliban and al-Qaeda. They mostly kill other Muslims.

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